


Death Reversed (The Arcana Zombie AU)

by LymneirianApparition



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Inspired by The Walking Dead, Multi, Nadia Kicking Ass, Portia Devorak Kicking Ass, Resident Evil references, The Walking Dead References, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2019-11-16 08:01:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18090509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LymneirianApparition/pseuds/LymneirianApparition
Summary: Nadia awakens knowing only one thing: that her husband, Count Lucio is dead. But how can she be the only one left in the palace? She quickly discovers that the palace is abandoned, yet she is not alone.





	1. From Nightmare to Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> With its mix of vaguely-defined magic and frightening supernatural plagues the world of The Arcana seemed overdue for a zombie apocalypse! All the familiar faces will be here, but probably not as lighthearted as we remember. Also will not necessarily follow the plot of the game.

Iron chains stretched from blackening walls across the burning room. Through the flames the twisted form swiveled its horned head, massive and goatlike. Red eyes burned from its ungulate visage, hotter than the flames themselves. Hotter than hell. From somewhere far beyond, yet near enough for its shadow to tower over all, Death’s long skull clacked shut and snapped its horselike teeth… 

The snap resolved into a horrified indrawn gasp as Nadia, Countess of Vesuvia sat bolt upright in her bed. Gasping, she tried to make sense of her surroundings. The light coming in her bedchamber’s windows looked cold and overripe. It must be at least noon, if not later. How had she slept so late? Why had no one awoken her— 

Her stomach then knotted as she remembered. She remembered flames and death, and not from the nightmare she’d just had. Lucio was dead. The count, her husband, dead inside a horrific fire inside his very bed chamber. Why could she remember nothing after that? The shock and strain of his murder just one night past? That had to be it. Well she could not lay here forever. She might not have loved Lucio, but she had always done right by him and by the city she had adopted as her home. Word of his death must have spread among the populace by now. She needed to be seen. The people had to know there was still a government and it was still in control. 

Nadia reached for the cord of the bell that would summon her servants to help dress her in her finest, only it wasn’t there. That was strange. Why was her bell taken down? Who would do such a thing? Annoyed, she rose from her bed and padded to the window looking out on the palace garden. But doing so brought a more disturbing sight than the missing bell. The gardens were overgrown, as though the gardeners hadn’t worked in weeks. Impossible. Yesterday the gardens had been fine… 

Trying to process these frightening errors in her reality, Nadia stalked back to her bed and that was when she discovered the objects on her nightstand. These included a pair of leather goggles with round lenses and a leather half-mask for covering the mouth and nose with tightly-woven steel grills covering vents to allow breathing. Beside these lay the cavalry saber she sometimes wore with her riding outfits. Weighted down by the sheathed weapon, she found a note in an unfamiliar feminine hand. 

_If you wake up and I’m not here, put these on & keep them on. Carry the sword for your protection. DO NOT open the door or leave the room! STAY PUT & wait for me to come to you. Keep the door shut & stay quiet no matter what you hear. I’m coming back for you so just wait & I’ll explain everything when I see you. _

_Your Servant,_

_P._

”Is this somebody’s idea of a joke?” Nadia wondered aloud. Then she examined the mask and goggles again, really examining the bits of brass and steel that had gone into their construction. She recognized them. Even the leather looked like it could have come from the box of leather scraps in— 

”My workshop!” She couldn’t believe it, but what she held in her hands had indisputably been made from materials in her tower workshop. But the craftsmanship was good. These could not have been made in the few hours since the fateful masquerade… 

She ran to the window again and cast her frantic gaze across the garden. It couldn’t have gotten like that overnight either. Time had passed. More than one night. Nadia began to feel cold and she now looked to her chamber door like she no longer trusted it. 

“How long have I been asleep? What’s been happening all this time?” 

She didn’t recognize the handwriting on the note. Nor did she have any idea who “P” was. She knew of no one in the castle’s whose name started with that letter. She wasn’t going to sit and be a prisoner in her own bedroom just because a piece of paper from someone she had never heard of told her to. But still… She could not dispute that something was wrong. And if P knew anything about what that was, then perhaps her warning merited being taken seriously. 

But how could she just sit? Something was happening and she had a feeling her people needed her. 

In the end, she compromised. Putting on one of her riding suits with trousers to allow for freedom of movement, she bound her Tyrian hair up in a braid, donned the mask and goggles left for her, strapped her sword to her waist, and set out into the hallway of a palace seemingly abandoned. *** 

Nadia cautiously walked corridors eerily abandoned and in frightening disrepair. It looked like it had been years since the place had been inhabited. She began to regret her riding outfit that she had thought so practical, its polished boots resounding far more with each footfall than she wanted them to despite all her efforts to move quietly. The wing that contained her bedroom seemed lonely and sad rather than threatening until she reached the south stairwell leading down to the ground floor. There, on the left-hand wall was a long smear of blood that led all the way down to the first landing where a pool of it had formed on the floor. Far too much of it for a human being to survive losing. The blood was long-dried, but it was enough to make Nadia draw her saber from its scabbard and proceed with its blade held out before her. 

Having grown up in Prakra’s ruling family before becoming Countess of Vesuvia Nadia was, of course, fully trained in swordsmanship. But she had never had cause to draw her blade. The idea of doing so now within the walls of her own home did not please her. Doing so made it feel not like home anymore. But then she made herself look at the huge pool of dried blood on the landing as she skirted around it and realized that it would no longer feel like home whether she had her sword drawn or not. 

Nadia left the mahogany double doors at the base of the stair ajar after skirting through them. She now thought of her bedroom upstairs as home base and she wanted a clear line of retreat if she needed to get back there. Walking the deserted corridors, she saw further splashes of long-dried blood and other signs of damage everywhere she looked. How could she have slept through something like this, and how could she have been spared if she had? She had thought that the note by her bed meant she was not the only one left, but what if that were no longer true? Everywhere Nadia looked she saw no signs of life, just evidence of a carnage long past. 

She instinctively worked her way inward, moving toward the center of the palace and the grand ballroom there. But once she reached it she found herself standing before the great double doors, now barred with a hastily bolted-on piece of lumber and staring in confusion at the ominous message written across them in black foot-high letters. 

Nadia blinked, not comprehending and read the bizarre message aloud to herself. _”’Don’t dead open inside?_ That doesn’t make sense…” Then her ruby eyes widened as she read it again. “Oh. _Don’t open. Dead inside._ I get it. But I still don’t—” 

Something slammed against the door from the other side, making Nadia skitter backward a full two meters. Whatever had attacked the door now seemed to be steadily pushing on it from the other side. The two-by-four that barred it held fast, however, shuddering in its brackets but holding whatever tide lay behind it at bay. Nadia still held her sword at arm’s length against the unseen horror, now more talisman against insanity than weapon against the real. 

“What is going on?” she whispered to no one as a bead of sweat trickled down the side of her head. “What the FUCK is going on?” 

Something shuffled behind her, far down the hallway she had just come from. Nadia spun and found herself looking at a female figure in a disheveled servant’s uniform and Nadia realized that she knew the girl: a cook’s assistant from the kitchens. 

“Sera?” She called out. “Sera, thank God! Another human being. Sera, can you tell me what happened here? Can you tell me what’s behind this door? Where is everybody else?” 

The figure did not move; but seemed to tremble. 

“Sera, are you injured? What’s happening? Talk to me.” 

But Sera did not answer, and the silence pushed back against Nadia’s twinging nerves. 

”Talk to me! I order you to talk to me!” 

Sera’s mouth dropped open into a feral rictus. She snarled and began to run full-tilt at Nadia, arms out stretched and grasping for her Countess in animal greed. 

”SERA!” Unbelieving, Nadia dodged only at the last second and Sera slammed headlong into the barred door, renewing the fury of whatever lay on the other side. When the servant turned her face toward Nadia it was contorted in unthinking hate, but that was not what made Nadia gasp. Sera had sores on her forehead that opened up down to the bone. Part of her bottom lip had been torn away too: a bloodless wound revealing teeth set in receding gums. The smell of death bloomed from her as the result of the impact. But the unholy hunger on the woman’s damaged face did not change and her stiff muscles clenched as she prepared to pounce again. 

”Sera…” Nadia pleaded. “Please don’t do this. It’s me!” 

But Sera only growled and forced Nadia to spin away as she awkwardly lunged again. Unable to bring herself to use her sword on her own servant, Nadia ran. With Sera between her and the south staircase she sprinted for the north one instead, the feral maid hot on her heels. Nadia’s longer stride and good overall physical conditioning let her easily outpace the other woman, but it seemed all for naught when she found the doors to the north stairwell locked from the other side. With Sera closing fast, Nadia did not hesitate to bring the pommel of her basket-hilted saber down upon the ornamental door handle again and again. The doors themselves might be sturdy mahogany, but the fittings themselves were not built to withstand such an assault. The handle broke and Nadia slipped through and up the stairs just as Sera’s jaws snapped at the air where she had just stood. She gained more time as the flailing Sera stumbled and fell at the base of the stairs, but the pursuer was quickly on her feet and scrambling after Nadia again. 

Nadia burst out onto the second floor and made a beeline for her bedchamber, but froze when she got halfway down the hall leading to it. There, at the end in the direction of the south stairs stood two more hunched, feral figures in servant’s clothes. She spun back around to see Sera skulking toward her getting ready to pounce once again. 

The Countess braced herself and readied her sword. “Sera, please. Don’t make me do this.” 

But Sera only snarled like a beast and threw herself at her prey. Nadia’s sword flashed and the servant crumpled to the floor, moving no longer. Chunks of brain matter oozed from the crack that the sword had dug into her skull. Nadia had no time to process the horror at ending her own servant’s life, for two more like her had now emerged from the north stairwell. One was one of the palace guardsmen. The other Nadia recognized as the wife of one of her lesser court officials, her gown now in tatters. Both only regarded Nadia as prey and lurched toward her snarling. The two servants at the other end of the hall joined the assault. Boxed in, Nadia made a grab for the door to her bedroom. It didn’t open. It must have locked again behind her when she’d left. She didn’t see how she could fight a four-on-one battle against the fearless, reckless beasts these people had become. But she had no choice. 

Suddenly, Nadia was no longer alone with the maddened. A cloaked figure appeared from the direction of the south stairwell. With a throaty shout, it charged the attackers on that side and they turned snarling to face the new threat. The glimpse Nadia got showed the form of a small woman in sturdy, knee-high leather boots and bits of leather armor girding her torso and forearms. Goggles and a mask not unlike Nadia’s own partially concealed a pale face beneath a mane of thick red hair. The weapon she raised looked like a quarterstaff mated with a heavy-bladed knife grafted to each end. Nadia thought her eyes deceived her, but the small woman appeared to sprint halfway _up_ the wall as the two feral servants lunged for her. With another battle cry, she launched herself off of it and brought her weapon down, cleaving through an enemy skull. 

The distraction almost cost Nadia dearly, for the guard and the noblewoman had reached her. She ducked their flailing arms and used her forward momentum to propel the blade of her saber through the woman’s corset and into the fatty meat underneath. The noble’s wife gave no indication that she even felt pain, and Nadia had to lunge away as the woman snapped her jaws in defiance. 

The warrior woman, having now felled both her opponents finished the noblewoman off from behind, smashing a blade through the back of her skull. Nadia claimed the guardsman for her own kill, slashing through his scalp to end him in kind. From unseen corridors, further snarls unfurled and hunched shadows played the walls, heading in their direction. 

“Come on!” The woman grabbed Nadia’s sleeve and dragged her along. Seizing a key that hung on a cord around her neck, she unlocked the bedroom and shoved Nadia inside. Once she had locked them in, the redhead yanked off her goggles and breath mask to reveal a fine-featured, freckled face with large, alluring blue eyes. For all the soft delicateness of her features, however, the young woman came on as fierce as a drill sergeant. 

”Are you injured? Are you bitten?” she barked at Nadia. 

”What? No…” Nadia stood rubbing her wrist from the young woman’s powerful grip but stopped under her intense gaze and removed the coverings from her face. “Thank you for saving me, but those were my people. We just killed my people! I need you to tell me what is going!” 

The redhead ignored her. She stomped to the nightstand where she yanked up the note, which she carried back to Nadia and waggled before her face. “Did you not read my note?” she all but screamed. “It said wait for me! Stay put! Don’t leave this room! _Don’t go outside!_ And what do you do but the _complete fucking opposite!”_

She crumpled the note in her small fist and flung it aside. “Why did I even bother learning to write your stupid language if nobody pays attention when I do? Damnit, I have worked too hard keeping you alive since this started to have you commit suicide five seconds after finally waking up! Do you have any idea what I’ve gone through to make sure that you were safe here and that none of those things could get to you? Do you?” 

”No, I do not!” Nadia retorted. “Because I have no memories! My husband died and that’s all I know! How could I just stay put? I’m sorry for putting us in danger, but for all I knew, years had passed since that note was written and the person who wrote it was never coming back. I didn’t even know who wrote it.” 

She narrowed her eyes at this mysterious woman. “I still don’t know who wrote it. Who are you?” 

The redhead held her stare a few seconds longer, then the drill sergeant seemed to drain out of her. “My name is Portia, and you’re more right than you know.” 

”What do you mean?” 

Portia drew a heavily-stained cloth from a pocket within her cloak and shuddered with a sigh of regret as she wiped the gore off the blades of her weapon. “It has been years, Countess. I think you’d better sit down.”


	2. While You Slept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Portia tries to get Nadia to come to terms with the new undead reality.

Nadia sat on the edge of her canopied bed, her fingertips pressed to her temples as she vainly tried to quell the throbbing there. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that after Lucio died I fell asleep for _three years,_ and that over the course of the last month the city has been overrun by those sick people?” 

Portia sat on the floor before her with her delicate chin perched on her knees and her double-bladed staff held pressed against her shins. Her abundant red curls moved breezily as she shook her head. “They’re not sick people, Countess. They’re the walking dead.” 

Nadia’s head seemed to throb in rebellion against the very concept. “Ghosts are one thing, but the dead don’t walk. Lots of so-called magicians have fancied themselves necromancers, but not one of them has ever raised a corpse back to life. It can’t be done. There has to be some other explanation.” 

“Trust your own eyes if you won’t believe me, Countess. Those ones lying out there in the hallway now were all rotting. That female one? You ran two-and-a-half feet of steel through her belly and she didn’t even flinch. What can cause that? If you could hold one down long enough you would be able to find that they don’t breathe. Their hearts don’t beat. They don’t sleep. The only thing on them that still seems to be working is their digestive system, and it’s gotten so efficient that it completely absorbs _everything._ They eat and eat, but they never sh—” 

”You’ve made your point!” Nadia snapped. Why did this odd stranger think she wanted to hear such things? It felt like something important was trying to climb up out of her mind, but the headache thundered over it, chasing it in circles. Nadia sighed when she saw the girl was just looking at her, wounded by the outburst. 

“I’m sorry,” Nadia sighed. “It’s not you. I just… Need to change the subject while I think about what you’ve said. What about you? What’s your story?” 

Portia shrugged. “I’m just a servant. I’ve been working here almost a year.” 

“Your accent is not Vesuvian. How did you come to be working at the palace?” 

“I’m from Nevivon,” Portia replied. “But why would that stop me from working here? The palace is the biggest employer in the city.” 

Nadia blinked. “It is?” 

Portia, who clearly couldn’t believe that the Countess did not know that, said slowly, “Yes. It is. Well, it was, anyway. At any rate, there weren’t a lot of opportunities for an unskilled laborer back when I got off the boat. Basically it was either become a tavern wench, a fishwife, or this.” 

“Well,” Nadia said, a bit miffed, “I am glad we were able to overcome such stiff competition as beer and fish.” 

Portia shifted and reached into a leather satchel that lay beside her. She withdrew a tin of beans that looked to have come from the palace pantries along with a field can opener that she expertly used to peal off the lid. Next, she withdrew a spoon of the type found in field mess kits and promptly tucked in. 

“Well, at the time I couldn’t have imagined I would wind up tending the sleeping Countess herself. I think they figured that sitting with an unconscious woman was something so simple not even I could screw it up. But the truth was your condition required constant monitoring. For the better part of a year I rarely left this room.” 

“Thank you for doing that,” Nadia replied solemnly. “For caring for me. I can’t imagine it was easy.” 

Portia shrugged as she chewed. “You needed someone. I was here. I did what needed to be done.” 

She stuck the spoon in the tin and held it out to Nadia. “You want some? Lots of protein.” 

“No thank you. I don’t know if it’s on account of what I saw in the hall or having been off solid food for three years. But eating doesn’t sound appealing to me right now.” 

“Suit yourself.” Portial went back to eating. 

“So what was it that brought you from Nevivon? If you don’t mind my asking.” 

“I was looking for someone.” 

“Did you find him?” 

“I never said it was a him.” 

Nadia smiled at her. “When a woman says she’s looking for someone in that tone of voice it’s always a him. So did you find him?” 

Portia’s eyes flitted up at her, unreadable before returning her attention to her meager meal. “No. Not yet.” 

“You think he’s still out there in… this?” 

Portia’s shoulders lifted and fell in a small shrug. “If anyone still could be out there in this, it’s him.” 

At this, Nadia got up and strolled to the window, wincing against the light, but making herself look out at the untamed garden all the same. “How far do you think it goes? You said the city has been overrun, but how can you be sure?” 

Portia got up and joined her by the window, setting the empty bean tin upon the nightstand along the way. “The city for sure. But I think it’s spread beyond into the countryside, the rest of the continent, maybe the whole damn world for all I know.” 

“But how can you be sure?” 

Portia glared up at her. “Because I saw! While you lay there sleeping I looked out these very windows and I saw! I saw people running through the garden right down there. I saw them get cut down by the dead, then eventually rise again to hunt more of the living. I heard the screams, and in the distance, out in the city I saw the fires. While you slept I listened to the chaos in the distance. I listened to it for days until there was no more chaos: only silence and the moans of the dead!” 

A high-pitched ringing noise pierced through Nadia’s skull and sent her staggering. The room seemed to blacken around her despite the daylight filling it. As though muffled through cotton she could hear Portia calling out to her, then felt the other woman’s hands upon her, guiding her to the bed. Nadia fell onto it and held onto her head as the wail within it subsided and she struggled to resist the nausea it left in its wake. The next thing she knew, Portia was coaxing her to sit up and sip water from her canteen. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…” she kept saying. “Oh, I shouldn’t have yelled. It’s not your fault. I should have been here when you woke up, then made sure you were well. I spent all that time taking care of you and now here I am taking it out on you. Please forgive me. I’m so sorry.” 

“I’ll be fine. It’s just a headache,” replied Nadia after making sure the water was going to stay in her troubled stomach. 

“Like back down now. You need to rest.” 

“I’ve rested enough. Besides, we can’t stay here anymore. I let the Dead back into this wing, remember?” 

“You rest here and I’ll find them and take care of them. I already shut the door at the bottom of the south stair so we’ll be fine once however many got in have been put down.” 

“You don’t understand, Portia. I went out through the south stair, but when Sera chased me I came back up through the north stair.” 

Portia’s red eyebrows lifted. “But that would have been locked from that side.” 

“It was. I had to smash the lock to get back in. Sera was coming after me and there was no time. That stairwell is an open access point for them now.” 

Portia jammed the blade at the bottom of her weapon against the floor in frustration, but fought back the urge to lash out at Nadia. “We would have to leave eventually anyway. I’ve pilfered what non-perishable food I could from the kitchens and stocked it In rooms up here, and there’s plenty of water in the cisterns. Two people could live on it a long time. But it doesn’t seem to matter how many of the Dead I’ve put down, it seems like there’s always more. Hundreds of people lived and worked in this palace.” 

Nadia looked toward the windows again. “If there are survivors still out there in the city, then it won’t be long until they’re forced to start doing unspeakable things just to feed themselves. If they haven’t already.” 

“Right. Including break into the big, abandoned palace that was always known for having plenty of food. I’ve gotten pretty good at holding my own against mobs of monsters. I don’t know how I’ll fare against a mob that can think.” 

“We can live here a long time,” Nadia said as she pushed to her feet. “But not long-term. Besides, this city is my responsibility. If there is anyone still alive out there then they need me, and I must go to them.” 

“It’s beautiful that you think that way, Countess. They told me that’s what you were like. But noble intentions aren’t enough. We need to have an objective. We need to have a goal.” 

Nadia strapped her sword belt around her waist and picked up her protective mask and goggles. “We do have one, and it’s someplace I think you already know very well: my tower workshop. You did well with what you’ve already created but now that I’m back, I can make them better and _more.”_

Confidence returned to her stride as she put the mask over her mouth and the goggles over her red eyes. Once she drew her saber from its sheathe she became fully a woman that people naturally obeyed again and Portia, without even realizing it, fell in step behind her, ready to respond in kind. Nadia looked back at her, jewel-like eyes hard behind the lenses. 

”So that’s where we’re going. And we have not long before nightfall and a lot of sorry undead souls to cut through before we can get there.” 

Growls and moans could be heard outside. Seizing the handle, she opened the door.


	3. Going for the Brain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The journey to the tower shows Nadia the cost of battling the dead.

His name had been Jameson and he was a tall, lean, lad of twenty-four years with a gentle smile and strawberry blonde hair that was already starting to thin. He had applied to join the palace guard as soon as he was legally of age to do so and after two years on the waiting list, his application had finally been accepted. He enjoyed pumpkin bread purchased hot from the baker in the marketplace and games of pinochle with his comrades in the barracks. He took his duties utterly seriously and none could have imagined him questioning a superior. But if you got him in his cups, he would tell you that Count Lucio had been an odious man and that Countess Nadia had deserved so much better. 

But now Jameson was gone, and the reanimated husk of his body lunged for Nadia with only a rudimentary mix of hate and hunger left in his barely-functioning brain. Nadia, who had just ducked under the clumsy strike of one of his fellow undead, spun under Jameson’s claws too, her saber arcing through the legs of his soiled uniform. The Jameson-thing crumpled, snarling, to the floor, his kneecaps split in two. 

“What are you doing?” demanded Portia as she squared off against the corpse of a footman a full head taller than her. “Go for the brain! Nothing else kills them!” 

As if to emphasize her point, she used the man’s height against him, ending his unlife by driving her double-bladed staff up through his lower jaw and into his brainpan. 

Nadia spun back to her feet as if dancing, her saber lopping off the top of the head of the zombie she had evaded in the first place. “You have to control the field of battle! It’s harder for them to reach you if their legs don’t work!” 

Her own legs still working just fine, Nadia leapt back as another living corpse came stumbling over Jameson’s prone form. Even more off-balance than usual for its kind, it feel as easy prey to her sword. Meanwhile, Portia sliced the Achilles tendon on a female attacker, and it fell like a bag of stones. Her weapon spun and punctured the foe’s skull on the downward counterstroke. 

“If you’re going to fell them, finish them!” she growled. 

But even as Portia did this one more foe tried to flank her. Nadia used a classic fencer’s lunge to drive the end of her blade through its eye socket. No sooner did it fall dead, however, then Jameson’s corpse skittered forward on its belly, grabbing onto Nadia’s rear leg and digging its teeth into her riding boot. 

_”No!”_

Portia cried. Nadia yanked her leg free and chopped his head to pieces with her blade almost in annoyance.

“That’s why you finish them!” Portia nearly shouted now that all the enemy lay dead. “Some can crawl almost as fast as they run! Take your boot off!” 

“It’s fine. The bite didn’t go through.” 

_”Take it off!”_

“Alright!” 

Nadia sat down in the space between the two piles of corpses and yanked the knee-high leather boot from her foot, showing Portia her unblemished ankle. “There. Are you happy?” 

Portia not only relaxed but dropped her weapon out of the ready position she had held it in. “You were going to cut my leg off!” Nadia exclaimed, wide-eyed. 

Portia’s delicate mouth tensed. “If those teeth had pierced your skin, it would have been the only way to save your life. Once their saliva is in your blood, you have seconds to stop it circulating. Obviously, a bite anywhere other than an extremity means you’re out of luck. Their spit or blood touches your mucus membranes, you’re out of luck. That’s why we wear these.” 

She tapped the edge of her homemade goggles. 

”Don’t get overconfident with your fancy swordplay, Countess. It’s tempting because they’re so much clumsier than a living attacker. But they can also kill you so much easier.” 

”You’re one to talk about fancy swordplay,” said Nadia as she got to her feet. “Where did you learn to wield a staff like that?” 

”On a ship where we had to be ready to defend against pirates,” said Portia neutrally. 

”Horse feathers. I’m from Prakra and I was learning Prakran martial arts before your father ever even looked in your mother’s eyes. One of my sisters is a master of the fighting style you’re using. How did you come by it?” 

”On a ship. To defend against pirates. Now do you want to stand there telling me more about what an adventurous childhood you had? Or do you want to get to your workshop tower before more of these things come to investigate all the noise?” 

“Lead the way,” Nadia said, gesturing Portia past her. “I acknowledge what a close call I just had. I will be more careful from now on.” 

Portia went ahead of her without another word, but Nadia now kept a close eye on how she carried her bladed staff, noting all the familiar gestures and habits of a Prakran staff-fighter. They would talk later, whether Portia knew it and liked it or not. Especially then. 

*** 

Portia remained in a sour mood as they continued their treacherous journey. Nadia supposed that almost having to cut a leg off of someone you’d been caring for over the past year would do that to you. Nadia let her stew in her emotions, despite the many questions she had for her. So she hung back and obediently followed whatever terse instructions Portia issued. The only time Portia grew less than methodical and quickened her pace was when they passed a set of stairs leading to a darkened, ominous section of the palace that seemed to bear a darkness that had nothing to do with the undead rampage. 

As they passed it, the ringing returned to Nadia’s ears, although not at the crippling level she had experienced in her bedroom. An orange halo outlined the blackened look of the corridor at the top of the stairs and Nadia fought against waves of nausea while trying to process the too-bright overlay upon her visual field. Something was at the top of the stairs: four-legged shape that sat on its haunches, its long, lean face looking down at her. A dog. From her subconscious its name came floating back to her. 

“Melchior? Melchior, is that you?” Gripping the bannister like death, she began to ascend despite the dizziness that each step brought. Melchior watched her quizzically, like it didn’t understand why she was doing what she was trying to do. Nadia stumbled as the orange haze swelled to intolerable levels and the dog seemed to fade away, leaving a negative space in the light where it had been. Then both the dog and the light were gone and Nadia sank upon the marble steps, only rising again when Portia grabbed her and began dragging her back down the stairs. 

”What are you doing?” Portia cried. “Stay away from there! You can never go up there!” 

”I saw a dog,” Nadia mumbled. “Melchior. One of my husband’s dogs.” 

”Any animals left in this palace that haven’t been eaten are all hiding,” Portia said with a grunt as they reached the base of the stairs. “I haven’t even seen my cat Pepi in weeks. Trust me, there are no dogs up there.” 

“But that’s where they lived. I remember. That’s my husband’s wing of the palace. That’s… where he died.” 

“I know, and you can never, ever go up there!” 

”Why? Because of the undead?” 

Portia still had her hand on Nadia’s coat and was dragging her away from the stairs as fast as she could. “No. Worse. Because that’s where _it started!”_

They advanced on, leaving Lucio’s wing in its darkness. Behind them the stairs lay silent. At the top of them, nothing stirred. 

*** 

The bearded man lay sprawled upon the landing. His two broken legs indicated a nasty fall down the spiral staircase. His great, pink face looked stretched and taut. His yellow eyes bore no remnant of humanity, and he just lay there emitting a low, guttural moan. A few steps down, just out of his reach, Nadia and Portia looked upon his pitiful bulk with dismay. 

”It’s been a few days since I’ve been up here,” Portia explained. “He wasn’t here then.” 

”His name is Hugh,” Nadia said, regretfully. “My metallurgist. I consulted him often for my projects. The door was locked, but he had a key. I don’t understand, Portia. You said the Dead can’t manage doors, let alone open locks.” 

”They can’t. Which means he wasn’t dead when he came in here. You see the bite just under the collar of his shirt there? He was probably trying to get to the workshop. Lock himself in where he thought he wouldn’t be a threat to anyone else. But the fever must have overcome him during the climb, and he fell. Too wounded to move he probably just lay like that until he died. Then he woke up again. We should be grateful, at least, that he didn’t make it inside the workshop.” 

As callous as this sounded, Nadia knew Portia was right. Still, she could not look away from the yellowed eyes of this man she had once known. “I thought we were the only ones left.” 

”I haven’t seen anyone else in a long time, but this palace is colossal. There could be plenty of other survivors locked away in various rooms. With you to take care of I haven’t explored more than I’ve absolutely had to. This tower and the pantry are the only places outside your wing that I go. That, and the one trip I made to the armory to get my armor and what I needed to build this,” 

She rolled the bladed staff in her hands. 

”But I’m not the only one who has been scavenging the pantries for food, and I wasn’t the one who sealed the ballroom either. I regret not finding him before he turned. We could have used whatever he knew about whoever might be left.” 

Nadia just stared at the former metallurgist. Thinking there was no more to be said, Portia stepped forward, ready to end his torment. Nadia grabbed her arm. 

“Let me. He was a friend. I owe it to him.” 

She stood over Hugh for a moment, out of reach of his jaws that feebly snapped at her. “I am sorry this happened to you,” she said. “Goodbye, Hugh.” 

Then, she split his skull with her sword. 

”You’re becoming more efficient,” Portia said from behind her as they continued up the stairs and left the zombie behind. “That’s a good thing.” 

Nadia did not look back at her. “I understand the need.” 

”You’ll grow more efficient still, Countess. I stopped saying words for any of them weeks ago.” 

Nadia said no words now. Their aching legs finally brought them to a single, heavy wooden door. After rapping on it, then waiting a while for any kind of sound from the other side, Portia unlocked it and they stepped inside the workshop that was to be the nerve center of Nadia’s entire plan.


	4. The Woman You Were

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nadia and Portia bond over gunsmithing, and someone - or something - else now stalks them in the palace.

Nadia had expected to find a few crude, half-finished projects littering her work desk. She had not expected the admirably-crafted, fine brass and steel parts along with careful and copious notes in Portia’s rounded, feminine hand. 

“I can’t believe this, Portia. You were making this?” 

The redhaired woman was in the process of setting their gear down on the sofa at the back of the room where Nadia sometimes slept when a project took her late into the night. “I was. I just didn’t have the knowhow. A weapon against zombies isn’t any good if it blows your face off the first time you try to use it.” 

”This is a portable cannon, Portia. Where did you learn to craft one? To even get this far with a schematic?” 

”If you’re ever on a ship that has to watch out for pirates, make friends with the master gunner. He’ll teach you a lot.” 

Nadia scrutinized the partially-constructed firearm that lay before her once again. Portia had been working toward something that, if perfected, could turn a zombie’s head into so much flying hamburger. It would take a special master gunner indeed to impart the knowledge to create such a thing in handheld form. “What kind of ship did you say this was again?” 

Portia stiffened slightly for just a moment, then busied herself with looking through the pack she had already inventoried. “The kind that has to watch out for pirates.” 

Nadia in turn busied herself with looking through the various bins of components, fittings, and scrap metal. “You said that Lucio’s wing was where all this started. What did you mean by that?” 

Portia sighed sadly and stopped what she was doing. She came over to stand by Nadia at the work desk. “You have to understand, I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it with my own eyes. What I know I pieced together from those who survived and were fleeing. But apparently it was the court. Five members of it, in particular. Your husband’s wing had been sealed since the night of his death, but these five insisted an investigation was long overdue. They demanded to be let inside. The chamberlain and the captain of the guard tried to stop them, but in the end the courtiers had their way. They got in and when they came out… When they came out, they had changed. They attacked people, and those they bit or killed rose again: the first of the undead. It was chaos. No one understood what was happening until it was too late. The infected got into the streets before the gates could be sealed. The courtiers themselves – the first carriers – they escaped too.” 

Nadia frowned, thinking of her husband, the Count. “I know that Lucio was sick before he died. Is that what this is? His sickness transformed into something worse after moldering in his room for years?” 

”I can’t answer that,” Portia said. "I just know that those five went inside and when they came out, people started to die. I holed up in your wing to protect you. Others ran, some hid, but in the end, it was the dead who ruled.” 

Nadia’s purple eyebrows furled as she judged the work done on the weapon so far, and what needed to be done still. “Then it’s time to end their rule. I think I can do it. I think I can complete this weapon. It will take a while. Are you okay with waiting in here for a while, while I do it?” 

“I’d be happy to.” But Portia’s tone showed no happiness, just the same stalwart sense of necessity with which she seemed to approach most tasks. Nadia let the silence hang dully between them for a few minutes as she began her work, then spoke again. 

“Portia, who were you before this?” 

Portia went and sat on the couch. “I told you. I was a handmaid hired to watch over you while you slept.” 

“No, I don’t mean your occupation. I’m talking about the woman you were before you had to become this hardened soldier. What were you like? What were your hobbies? Your dreams?” 

She was fully expecting Portia to deflect, change the subject, or simply not answer. To her surprise, Portia did not hesitate. 

“I guess I was pretty ordinary. I liked food. I liked drinking beer. I’d go to taverns like the Rowdy Raven where I’d maybe drink too much and sing and dance. I wasn’t in a hurry to settle down, but I liked to flirt and to have sex. I’ve been told I’m too curious for my own good, and that I love to explore. I guess I take after my brother that way. He’s the one I came here to find. 

“For some reason, I was given a cottage at the back of the palace grounds. A perk of being the Countess’s personal servant, apparently. I had a nice garden there, and I’d work in it every single day. If I wasn’t in your room with you, then I was there, digging in the dirt. I haven’t been back there since this started. It’s probably all dead by now. God, I miss my cat!” 

She looked away and rubbed her face, and Nadia knew she was wiping a tear out of her eye. 

“I don’t think you are too curious for your own good,” Nadia told her. “If anything, I think that quality probably saved you. It gave you the adaptability and the inquisitiveness to surive; thrive even, in a rapidly changing and hostile world. You’re a remarkable woman, Portia. I’m honored to know you.” 

“Remarkable. I’ve never been called that before. Not even by my brother.” 

“Well, then we’ll just have to find him, Portia. And when we do, I shall be sure to set him straight.” 

The riddle of finishing the firearm seemed to lock into place. Nadia realized just what she would need and where to find it. She went to the correct shelf and pulled down the box she needed, only to be confronted by two menacing, flat red eyes that framed a hideous beak that jutted hungrily before her. The red of those eyes expanded to engulf her vision like— 

_Flames. Lucio burned and died. Death towered above, clacking its great jaws. From its shoulder, a harbinger. A raven: eater of carrion, consumer of the dead. Its wings broadened, expanded. Its body shifted into a man-shape. Cloaked in black. Hair as red as the haze. A smile of false friendship while Lucio screamed and Lucio died…_

“Julian Devorak…” 

Nadia knelt on the floor clutching her head. Portia, who had been reaching for her, recoiled. “What?” 

“Julian Devorak!” Nadia snarled. “I remember now. Julian Devorak, the doctor! He was the man who killed my husband.” 

She stood up and grabbed the face – the black, beaked mask – off the shelf and advanced at Portia with it. “This is his mask, Portia! Why is it here? Why do you have his mask?” 

“It’s a plague doctor mask!” Portia protested. “Lots of doctors use them! I made it for protection. But it’s not practical for dealing with the Dead. The field of vision is too restricted, plus it gets stuffy. Sweat gets in your eyes. Once I figured out it wasn’t any good I left it here.” 

Nadia faltered, looking at the thing in her hands. “Oh. I’m sorry. I… I just remembered him. He wore one almost exactly like this.” 

“You really think this… Doctor Devorak murdered your husband?” 

“I saw it. Just now. Like a vision. Death sent him, and he took Lucio away.” 

“Why would a doctor do that?” Portia asked warily. 

“I don’t know. But seeing this mask triggered the memory. It’s important. He’s important somehow.” 

She held out the plague doctor mask to her companion. “Put it with the rest of our supplies.” 

“I just said it isn’t much good.” 

“That may be,” said Nadia. “But I feel like we might need it just the same. And it’s a feeling I’d rather not ignore.” 

*** 

The explosion nearly blew Portia off of her feet, but her aim held true. The top of the zombie’s head evaporated and it slumped lifeless to the ground. It had been two whole days since they had entered Nadia’s tower workshop and Portia now held the result of their labors in her hands, the brass barrel oozing smoke in the wake of the destructive blast. 

“So we know the short-barrel version is lethal at fifteen-feet,” Nadia said. She held up her longer, slimmer weapon. “And the long-barrel is effective to a range of twenty-five. Basically, if it gets past me, it still have to get past you.” 

”You’re a genius, Nadia. But it’s risky to rely on these given that they’re attracted by sound.” 

“And given our finite supply of ammo. I’ve got supplies in the pack to make more, but that takes time and even then, I can’t do it indefinitely. But on the streets of the city, I’m confident these will make all the difference.” 

They had decided to do their weapon tests on a small pocket of undead that had been locked into a parlor on the ground floor. With the new firearms having performed up to expectations the two women began the next phase of Nadia’s plan to help any who survived. Her goal was to cross the city to the coliseum. The massive landmark stood as a shameful reminder of her husband’s appetite for bloodsports, but it was also the largest and most easily defensible structure in the city after the palace. If any number of people had managed to rally, then they would have done so there. 

“I don’t like it,” Portia was saying for about the nineteenth time. “If there are survivors there, they’ll be suspicious. If they have any bows or crossbows, then from the upper tiers they’ll have a wide angle of fire. There’s just no way to approach it on foot without being seen…” 

Nadia, who had already heard all these complaints nodded along with them until they reached the ballroom lobby with its ominously-painted double doors. Then pain crept back into Nadia’s skull. It started as a dull ringing that she tried to tune out and keep at bay. But soon it overwhelmed everything and brought with it the now-familiar, blinding halo. Nadia managed to stagger to the far wall, away from the doors of death, but she could go no further and collapsed there. 

Portia, efficient as ever, was already digging in one of her packs. “I’ve got some willow bark. It’s great for headaches. Once I understood yours weren’t going away I was sure to pack some…” 

But as she searched, irritation creased her features. “It’s not here. Damnit, I must have left that kit in your room! I can’t believe this. How could I have been so careless?” 

“It doesn’t matter,” said Nadia through gritted teeth. “Just go get it.” 

“I can’t leave you here.” 

“Go! This one isn’t going away. We’ve cleared the area. It’s safe. I’ll be fine. Just go get it and come back!” 

Portia stood, vacillating. Then, after giving Nadia a harsh command of “Do not move from that spot! Wait for me to come back!” she put her goggles and mask back over her face and sprinted off in search of the forgotten medicine. 

Nadia sat there slumped over and languishing, gritting her teeth through the pain. It felt like a memory was trying to fight its way to the surface, and the harder it fought, the more her head throbbed. But she could ride it out. She had ridden out being the youngest of seven sisters, always looked down upon and having to compete. She had ridden out governing Vesuvia with Lucio, somehow. She could endure this pain. And Portia would be back for her. Of that, she had complete faith. 

*** 

Portia made the sprint to the south stairwell and up to the Countess’s room in record time. She found the extra medical kit with the willow bark laying in plain sight on a divan, right where she had left it. Cursing herself again for having been so stupid, she grabbed it up and made one last sweep of the room. She doubted they were ever coming back here, so she grabbed an extra riding outfit for the countess and the bottle of cordial that hid inside Nadia’s nightstand drawer. Portia wasn’t planning on kicking back for a drink, but as disinfectant, fuel, or an item for barter the alcohol would be precious. 

But it wouldn’t matter if Nadia were attacked and killed before she returned to her, so she was back out the door and running, barely slowed down by the new items that she carried. Yet when she reached the stop of the stairwell, she froze. The doors at the bottom were closed, just as she’d left them. But that horrible pool of dried blood that she remembered the creation of only too well and that she had seen every day since was not the same. A huge, dusty boot print had been tracked on top of it, made by a foot too huge to belong to her or Nadia. It had not been there when she had come up the stairs. 

Before she could spin or raise her weapon one massive arm pinned both of hers to her body from behind, followed by a huge hand pressing over the mask on her face. 

*** 

Nadia had sunk down onto her side and held her hand over her face to block out what little light the room contained. She had peeled off her goggles. She knew she would catch hell from Portia for it, but the pressure from the strap was just too much on her throbbing head. 

_“Please come back, Portia.”_

Her partner had been gone too long. If any misfortune had befallen Portia, Nadia did not know if she could go on by herself. Secretive and aloof the servant-turned-survivor might be, Nadia had come to cherish her company. Not everything about her added up, but she was the only stable thing in world gone mad and desolate. And if she had gotten into trouble she could not handle alone because Nadia had forced them to separate, then her blood was on Nadia’s hands. 

Nadia’s heart soared at the sound of boots upon the marble flooring. But when she opened her eyes the sight that greeted her was not Portia . The one looming over her wore an outfit entirely of immaculate white, save for their heavy black boots and black apron. The greenish skin, red eyes, and sharp-toothed grin that composed its horrid face made Nadia think it was one of the Dead that now loomed over her. But then the memory that had been clawing its way in broke through the rubbery membrane of her headache. This was Quaestor Valdemar, the palaces's head surgeon, and they had always looked like that. 

“Quaestor… You’re alive? How…” 

“You’re too late,” they said, their rictus grin unchanging. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“He’ll find you. He is coming. And you will lead him to the heart.” 

Nadia pushed herself up, fighting stars in her vision. “Who’s coming? What heart? Quaestor, answer me!” 

But Quaestor Valdemar was walking on, moving forward. “It is time for you to move on. Move on, that you may lead him.” 

Nadia dragged herself to standing and heaved up the shotgun that still lay beside her. “Quaestor stop! Get away from that door!” 

The Quaestor placed their black-gloved hands upon the beam that held the doors closed. On the other side the undead surged in anticipation. 

Nadia cocked the shotgun. “Quaestor, don’t do it! Don’t you do it! I’m warning you!” 

Valdemar began to lift the beam. Nadia fired and the roar brought Nadia’s headache resounding back full force. She toppled to the ground but kept her grip on the weapon. When she opened her eyes Valdemar was nowhere to be seen. Scattershot peppered the doors, spreading outward from the tight cluster that gouged a hole right through the center of the beam that kept back the tide of the dead. 

”Oh no.” 

Nadia’s headache vanished once and for all. With no time for gratitude she turned and ran, the Dead tearing through the barrier behind her. Only one thought kept her from total panic: get to the south stairs and find Portia. 

Behind her the perpetual _danse macabre_ that had ruled for weeks in the ballroom ended, its revelers the slavering horde of the Dead that tore through the doors in hunger for their Countess.


	5. Survivors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Portia and Nadia are no longer alone. Both for better and for worse.

Nadia dashed through the doors to the southern staircase, locking them behind her. With any luck the horde she had accidentally freed would not follow this way. She was not expecting to have any luck, however. She dashed up the stairs, avoiding, as always, the ever-present pool of dried blood. “Portia,” she called out at the top of the stairs, as loudly as she dared. Nadia did not really expect an answer. At best, she expected to find the girl lying somewhere with her throat torn out, or at worst, already risen again as a monster. Or maybe she would just never find her at all. But to her surprise, she heard Portia’s voice reach out in response. Nadia rounded a corner and nearly jumped through the ceiling in surprise. She fumbled for the shotgun hanging over her shoulder by its strap for a second before she realized the hulking figure looming behind Portia was not an undead. Not that this made him less frightening. The man’s bare chest was a wall of knotted muscle, covered in scars and the cudgel he carried was practically the entire trunk of a small tree. 

“It’s alright,” Portia cried, her hands up to dissuade Nadia from firing. “This is Muriel. He’s a friend.” She looked upward at the gigantic man whose face was unreadable. “At least I think that’s what he is. He says he’s here to take us to someone who knows what’s going on and knows how to stop all this!” 

“Good, because we have to leave right now,” Nadia said, struggling to catch her breath. “The ballroom!” 

”What about the—” Then Portia’s large blue eyes widened to ridiculous proportions as she understood. “Oh my God, what happened?” 

But there was no time to explain. The growls of undead who had already found the compromised north stairway were already echoing down the adjoining hallway and the doors at the other stairwell that Nadia had locked came under assault, rattling against the slamming bodies of dozens of inhuman terrors. 

Muriel’s green eyes narrowed at this new annoyance. “I need to get you out of here.” 

A trio of zombies rounded the corner and Nadia wheeled on them, sword drawn. “No way out but through!” she cried and tore into them. Portia joined the fray. They felled the trio quickly. But doing so cost them precious seconds, during which the south stairway door was heard to give way, and more cries joined those from the direction the first trio had come. 

“We’re trapped,” noted Portia, grimly. 

“Follow me,” countered Nadia through gritted teeth. 

They turned the corner, two streams of undead folding in on them from either end of the corridor. Nadia led them into her bedroom just as the two mobs converged into one where they had fearfully stood. Muriel braced the door with his own considerable weight, but the way he had to struggle showed that the door would soon give way under the sheer weight of the undead pressing in on it. 

“We’re trapped,” said Portia. “What do we do? Try to bottleneck them in the doorway?” 

“We can’t fight that many,” Nadia said, her braid whipping as she shook her head. She began grabbing the sheets and silk veils from her canopy bed. “Start tying the ends together. We’ll make a rope to get down! Muriel, will you be able to hold them back?” 

“Not for long,” the big man grunted. 

The undead struggled relentlessly to reach the prey beyond the door but Muriel’s strength did not show any sign of giving out. Nadia and Portia knotted the sheets together as fast as they could. “This is ridiculous,” Portia muttered. “You do realize that the ground outside is almost four stories down, right?” 

Muriel had to lift his frightening voice to be heard over the din of the undead outside. “Have you got a better idea?” 

“You can literally run up walls, Portia. What are you worried about?” 

“Running up is one thing. Climbing down? Well, gravity is a cruel mistress.” 

Nadia locked their gaze, red eyes to blue. “Would you rather splatter on the ground and have it all over in an instant? Or be slowly torn apart by the dead until whatever’s left of you finally gets up and starts moving around as one?” 

Portia redoubled her tying efforts. “You make a compelling argument.” 

The shuddering of the door had been growing steadily in volume and every impact was throwing Muriel off balance more and more. “They’re coming through!” He roared, and then the door gave way. The big man stood his ground and formed an effective barrier, smashing the undead back with his club, their fallen bodies clogging the doorway, making it harder and harder for more to advance. But with them being so many it was only a matter of time. 

“Help him!” Nadia commanded in her mightiest voice and Portia obeyed without thinking. She darted to Muriel’s side and began stabbing at foes with her blades, her finesse complimenting Muriel’s brute force. But still the tide would not stop. 

“How many zombies were in that ballroom?” cried Portia. 

“All of them, apparently,” muttered Muriel. 

Nadia had roped together every suitable piece of fabric she could find. Fortunately, a countess’s bedroom meant there was a great deal. Tying one end firmly to the balustrade, she flung the mass over and was pleased to see that it stretched nearly to the ground. 

“Come!” 

“Can’t,” Muriel rumbled. “They’ll rush as soon as we stop fighting. We won’t all make it.” 

His intense eyes flicked downward to Portia, who looked like a child beside him. “You go.” 

“But what about you? Your mission?” 

“Doesn’t matter. Go! Seek Asra! The hut in the forest! Now go.” 

Portia silently pleaded, but with the big man already dealing with the press of the undead and seemingly resigned to his fate, she ultimately had no choice. She fled to the balcony and went down ahead of Nadia who dropped gracefully down the makeshift rope behind her. 

*** 

“I can’t believe it,” Portia lamented as the duo cautiously made their way through the overgrown palace gardens, wary of the myriad blind spots from which undead could attack. “The only other human being left in Vesuvia for all we know, and I get him killed! Just like all the others I couldn’t save.” 

“He made a choice, Portia. He chose to save you. And he’s not the only one. We just have to find this Asra that he mentioned. He mentioned a hut in the forest.” 

“That’s trying to find a needle in a haystack.” 

“Then we’d better get to work. You mentioned having a cottage back here. You have anything there we could add to our supplies?” 

“Probably. And it would put us close to the forest if we can get over the wall and out of the grounds.” 

“Oh, we’ll find a way to do that, Portia. Believe you me!” 

But when they emerged into the space that Portia directed them to, Nadia came up short. 

“You were worried your garden would be dead by now?” she said over her shoulder to Portia who nearly collided with her backside. “It looks like it’s doing fine to me.” 

The large mound at the back of the palace grounds was barely discernible as a house. The ceiling was thickly carpeted with hanging moss and all around it, the foliage literally writhed. Somehow sensing the newcomers, the mobile vines lashed out in their direction with tendrils big enough to crush the women’s bodies, yet which thankfully did not quite reach. 

“My graspgourd plants!” Portia exclaimed. “They’re out of control! They shouldn’t be able to get like this!” 

Nadia’s keen vision espied the white gleam of bone visible in the soil around the roots of the aggressive foliage. 

“Are graspgourds carnivorous?” 

“Not in the sense that you’d think. They’re sort of… scavengers. They’ll drag matter rich in nutrients to them to nourish their roots. Things like dead bugs and sometimes even rodents can get pulled in. But they can’t normally hurt living things, and I’ve never heard of them growing this big!” 

“Offhand I’d say undead wandered into them and got used for nourishment, and this is what happens.” 

Portia’s blue eyes widened in wonder. “People get eaten. People become zombies. Zombies get eaten. Plants become zombies. People get eaten again.” 

Nadia’s eyes widened too, aghast at her fascination. “Well I’m not interested in getting close enough to see if us getting bitten will turn us into plants! They’re all over the back wall and spreading. We’re not getting out this way. We have to double back.” 

“Wait!” 

A shape had appeared in the decaying cottage’s window: a tiny, fury shape. The little cat bounded to the ground and darted among the lashing vines like it was a game. The fast-moving creepers looked clumsy next to it, and it evaded all of their movements with precision born of long practice. 

“Pepi!” 

The blue-eyed cat bounded into Portia’s arms and nuzzled her with a happy _prrt!_ as though nothing in the world were wrong or could ever be. Portia reciprocated, becoming the smiling, beaming young woman she should have been as she rubbed noses with her long-lost pet. 

“Portia, we can’t take her with us. We can’t take care of a cat in this.” 

Portia put her back between Nadia and Pepi as though the former were trying to snatch the kitty away. “I took care of _you_ in this and you may as well have been inanimate! Meanwhile, she’d been dodging mutant graspgourds for a hobby. She knows more about what it’s like to survive out here than either of us. Stick with her and we might learn something!” 

Pepi’s ears suddenly flattened and she hissed. The women reacted to see a zombie coming at them from behind. They dodged past the charging abomination as Portia shouted, “See?” 

The reanimated human stumbled forward, carried by its own momentum, into the clutches of the graspgourd vines. Two competing plants seized its legs and arms, yanking in opposite directions until its rotting torso split at the belly. The two halves were dragged away to be fed upon, trailing entrails and still struggling as they went. 

Portia and Nadia’s jaws both fell open. They slowly turned and walked away from the feasting infestation of graspgourds, Pepi purring against Portia’s chest as they went.


	6. Nemesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The women find hope for a missing friend, and a terrifying new enemy on the hunt.

Out of breath, Nadia paused in their flight back through the gardens, Portia stopping behind her. The little cat Pepi hopped down out of Portia’s cloak to strut around and stretch her legs. Nadia envied the cat for her confidence. Their plan to shelter at Portia’s cottage and then scale the wall at the back of the garden to escape into the forest had been stymied by the discovery that both cottage and the wall had been overrun by Portia’s graspgourd plants, now turned monstrous from having consumed undead flesh. She could see no other option now save the palace’s front gate and a trek through undead-occupied Vesuvia. The very thing they had been trying to avoid. 

But perhaps that was for the best. She was the Countess of this dead city, and if any of its inhabitants yet lived, then they needed her. They had been trying to reach someone called Asra who supposedly had the answer to everything, but this Asra might not even exist. Her suffering people definitely did. At least, she hoped they still did. 

From where they stood they could see her balcony with the rope of blankets trailing to the ground. A man had given his life there to save them. They owed it to him to keep going, no matter where that path took them, even if she was having trouble now even remembering his face and name. 

Muriel. That was his name. 

After sipping some water and putting their masks back on the two companions and Pepi kept going, only to be greeted by a gory sight once they reached the spot where they had descended. Nearly two dozen undead had tumbled over the edge of the balcony in their week. Their broken and twisted bodies lay inert, staining the ground with their filth. A growl from above indicated that more undead still lurked in Nadia’s room above, and she and Portia ducked to the wall out of their view, lest more zombies add to the pile of death. 

“They should have survived the fall, right?” Nadia quietly asked. “As long as their brains weren’t damaged?” 

“Correct,” said Portia flatly as she surveyed the impressive carnage. 

Nadia gazed among the litter of corpses for answers, her eyes landing on something she had initially mistaken for another dead body, or part of one. Against Portia’s warnings, she darted out to retrieve it, then darted back and held up the heavy, dark pelt for her companion’s inspection. 

“This is Muriel’s,” Nadia said. 

Portia looked confused. “Who?” 

“Muriel! The big man who helped us! He covered our escape from up there!” 

“I know someone helped us,” said Portia, sounding far away. “Was that his name?” 

Nadia had been thinking her issues with recalling the man stemmed from the larger problems with her perception and memory. But if Portia, who was so sharp, had already forgotten him then something had to be actively trying to block their memory. If the man had protection from memory itself, then perhaps that protection extended against the undead. 

“He’s alive,” Nadia stated. “He dropped this in his flight, but he’s alive out here somewhere. He must have climbed down, then finished off the zombies that fell down after him. Look at them, all their heads are crushed. Some magic is trying to make us forget Muriel, but we must keep him in our minds, find him again, and learn more about this Asra person and why we have to seek them.” 

“Well the idea that there’s magic that can make people forget about each other creeps me right out, but I’ll trust what you say, Nadia. I just hope there aren’t undead clustered at the front gate because right now that’s our only way out of here.” 

“Either way we’re not leaving without Muriel.” 

They hugged the wall as Nadia led them around to the front of the palace. Night was beginning to fall and she began to despair of what to do. They could not be caught outside after dark, but with so many undead roaming the palace once again, going inside there was not an option. She thought of perhaps trying for the stables, but she doubted it would be any safer than anything else. These thoughts vexed her so that she did not even look at the front gate of the palace as they passed the long bridge that led to it. Portia tugged hard on the back of her coat. 

“Nadia, what the hell is that!?” 

Hearing Portia sound so alarmed was not comforting. What Nadia saw beyond the swirling iron bars of the palace gate was even less so. Instead of being overrun by undead, only one of the terrible things stood there. At least Nadia thought it was one. The thing towered far taller than any human being ever had: an obscenely muscled mountain of green flesh with dark ugly veins pulsing before the onlookers’ very eyes. It seemed to wear dark boots and trousers below its rippling torso; a human touch made terrifying by the single hellish eye that glowed bright yellow from the left side of its head. That horrible searchlight eye shed its luminescence upon the woman all the way at the end of the bridge, and the monster’s shadowed face twisted as it roared in fury. 

“I don’t know, but it’s out there and we’re in—” 

The oversized abomination charged, ramming its shoulder into the chained gate, which shuddered as its top hinge tore partially free from the wall. 

“I should learn to keep my mouth shut,” Nadia muttered. 

The thing backed up and charged again, covering fifteen feet in an instant. 

“I don’t think there’s any outrunning that.” Nadia began to walk forward on the bridge, unshouldering the homemade shotgun. 

“Nadia, are you insane? Don’t do this!” 

“My gun is effective at twenty-five feet, Portia. Yours at fifteen. Get ready.” 

Nadia didn’t know how she knew, but this new type of horror felt like an omen. She might no longer be able to trust her eyes after the experiences with Valdemar and the dog at the stop of the stairs, but this sense she trusted implicitly. They were going to be okay, she was sure. But only if they stood and fought. 

The brute executed a final charge that knocked the iron gates flat. Their clatter could not be heard over the monster’s roar. Its single lamp of an eye shone like the sun, turning dusk back into daytime. Nadia felt no fear, and its rush forward slowed like molasses before her eyes and she patiently counted its steps until it came into rage. The blast of her weapon spread over the palace grounds like a slow thunderclap. She saw the wound open in the impossibly knotted muscle of its abdomen and expected it not to slow the creature down one bit. She was right, and she let lead fly again, blasting another wound into the thick wall of its left pectoral muscle. The abomination kept coming, so she cocked the weapon one more time, just as a blast thundered from behind her and to the right. More buckshot tore a chunk out of its right shoulder. Portia had almost certainly been aiming for its head, but even at close range these handheld bombards left something to be desired in terms of accuracy. 

Nadia’s last two rounds brought the hulking horror to one knee. The last round even successfully jammed its face full of shot, but this did not impair the beast in any way. Nadia could swear it grinned in excitement at these foes who were proving to be such a challenge. It literally pounced, propelling hundreds of pounds of bulk through the air to flatten Nadia beneath it, even as Portia’s gun tore more meat from the back of its shoulder. 

Nadia had anticipated such an assault and dove to her right, somersaulting out of its way and hoping that Portia wouldn’t accidentally shoot her. She came upright in one piece and left her gun laying while she drew her sword. It was out of ammo and hopefully it was just a question of finishing the thing off. She brought her saber down in a decapitating arc only for the horror to reach back and catch the blade in one massive hand. Blood ran freely from the fist enclosing her blade, but Nadia’s strength was a joke against its own and she found herself flung over its shoulder like a ragdoll. Landing painfully, she saw Portia standing toe to toe with the thing, her looking smaller than ever beneath its mass. But it was so fast, and Portia could only dodge left and right, evading fists that would crush her bones with a single strike. Nadia fought against the pain in every inch of her to rise and come to Portia’s aid. But before Portia could be crushed, a tiny cream-furred head with black ears popped up from the collar of Portia’s cloak. These little black ears flattened back against its head as it hissed. 

“Pepi, no!” Nadia groaned. But the little cat launched herself airborne anyway, square at the monster’s face. Pepi became a flurry of scratching paws as she latched onto the beast and it yowled in frustration as the claws tore its sickening green flesh again and again. It brought its hand up to remove the nuisance. But before it could crush Pepi out of existence Portia’s boot connected with the side of its head, the latter having executed an improbable back-flip-kick. She landed in a crouch and Pepi landed safely on her back while the monster stumbled sideways, lost its balance, and plummeted into the moat below. 

Nadia joined Portia in peering over the edge of the bridge. The thing thrashed in the water below as snake-like creatures swarmed all over it, fanged mouths latching onto the beast as fast as it could yank them off and fling them away. 

“Lucio’s blood-drinking eels,” Nadia said grimly. “Never imagined they’d come in handy.” 

Portia tapped on her shoulder. “I don’t think we’re going to get to stick around and see who wins that fight, though. Look.” 

Perhaps a dozen undead had already shambled through the broken gate, undoubtedly drawn by the noise of the fight. They reached for the women with gnarled hands and snarled at them with slavering jaws. 

“No guns,” Nadia said as she checked her sword for damage. “It will only attract more.” 

“That was brave but stupid, Pepi,” Portia said to the cat that was burrowing under her collar again. “This time stay hidden and leave the fighting to us.” 

_Prrt!_ said Pepi. Then she vanished inside Portia’s clothes as the two women lifted their blades and began to carve their way out into the Vesuvian night.


	7. The Sanctuary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If our two heroines would find refuge in the city of death, then first they must face an army. Well, of sorts, anyway...

Their arms tired quickly from the weight of their swords. In the end, with night falling rapidly, Nadia and Portia had no choice but to run. Everywhere they turned it seemed like another pack of undead was rampaging forth to feed on them, and Nadia began to despair whether there were anyone else left alive in Vesuvia. And with each new pack emerging to feed, the women found themselves pushed further from the forest where the mysterious Asra was said to be waiting. 

Nadia and Portia saved each other’s lives more than once during that long, fearful flight, cutting down the horrors that emerged around blind corners and down darkened alleys. Eventually the streets twisted downward and the tired women followed the descent until the were able to catch their breath with their backs against a wooden palisade that that enclosed some kind of park. Portia practically had to force Nadia to pause long enough to take a swig of much-needed water. 

“We have to keep moving,” panted the Countess of the dead city as she passed the canteen back to her companion. 

“I think we lost them,” Portia replied. “The streets form a valley here. Their steps will echo. We’ll hear them coming. We have to slow down enough to actually look for shelter because we can’t keep going at this pace.” 

“I can keep going,” Nadia countered. 

“I can’t. And I’m not even the one who was just asleep for three years.” 

“Fine,” Nadia said. She stifled a cough brought on by her panting that seemed to prove Portia’s point for her. “With a park like this we’ve got to be near a residential district. There’s got to be some house we can gain access to. Maybe even one that won’t need clearing out. Follow this wall until it comes around to the next street and I’ll bet that’s where we’ll find—” 

A hellish shriek tore through the darkening sky, originating from the foliage within the park. The women cringed, then exchanged an agonized look as the nightmarish cry split the night again. From the direction they had come came the scampering of dozens of mindless feet and the snarls of the no-longer human. From the direction Nadia had suggested they go, more idle undead could be heard to stir. 

“Over the wall,” said Nadia, wide-eyed. “Now.” 

“With whatever monster’s in there?” asked Portia, astonished. 

“It’s a bird! Not that we have a choice even if it wasn’t.” 

Pepi suddenly tunneled her way out of Portia’s cloak. The tawny little cat coiled like a catapult spring, then launched herself at the top of the palisade, which she clambered over and vanished on the other side of. 

“Pepi thinks it’s safe,” Nadia said as the first of several dozen undead came into sight. “Trust her if you won’t trust me.” 

“After you!” 

Nadia stepped into Portia’s laced hands and caught the top as she jumped. Slinging her long limbs over the wooden barrier, she saw Portia’s double-bladed sword take the heads off two zombies before the smaller woman executed one of her magnificent leaps upward. Nadia caught her hand and pulled her over, but lost her grip on the barrier in doing so. The women fell to the ground, Nadia breaking Portia’s fall. They lay together in a pile, Nadia trying to reclaim the wind that had been knocked out of her. Pepi sat nearby, using her paw to wash her right ear as though nothing untoward had been happening. 

When Nadia regained her senses she found Portia just staring at her from above. “Something wrong?” 

“Your eyes,” Portia said, sounding far away. “They’re beautiful.” 

“Uh, thank you? And your right knee has a most fascinating shape. I know this because it is at this moment crushing my small intestine.” 

“Sorry!” Abashed, Portia rolled off of her Countess… and came up on one knee with her eyes level with the point of a crude spear formed from a knife lashed to a stick of bamboo. She discerned the outline of a young woman, perhaps her own age with long hair escaping from two frazzled buns. 

“DON’T MOVE!” 

“Take it easy,” Portia said, raising her empty hands. “We’re no threat to you—” 

“Not another word,” the girl snarled. “Or you’ll find yourself staked outside with this spear up your ass while the infected tear your guts out!” 

With no warning, Nadia somersaulted to her feet. Her blade flashed in the near-darkness and the young woman’s spear clattered harmlessly to the ground. “Would you like to try this again only this time being less rude?” she asked. 

The girl’s white teeth also flashed and she let out the laugh of the half-mad. “I don’t need a _weapon._ My brethren, _attack!”_

A large angry peacock fluttered to the ground beside Portia. Another one glided in to flank Nadia. Everywhere in the forested enclosure it seemed that belligerent peafowl were emerging to harass the two women. 

“Hey! That hurt!” Portia drew back her hand, nursing a finger nipped by an angry beak. Nadia had to backstep from the haughty display of another one as the birds proved themselves the source of the earsplitting shrieks that had drawn the undead. Another one tried to nip Pepi, but the cat batted its beak with her paw and the bird stood there bemused, as if uncertain how to proceed. 

The peacock keeper’s coat tails flapped away in the night and the women were forced to dodge a flurry of nipping beaks and shields of peacock feathers spread in prideful displays in order to chase after her. 

“Ow! Hey! Stop it! Get back! Stupid birds!” 

“Portia, I’ve seen you dodge your way past hundreds of zombies and not get bitten once. Why do you keep letting them bite you?” 

“I don’t know, milady,” Portia cried, struggling to yank an errant lock of ginger hair from the vicelike beak of a stubborn peahen. “Why do you _you_ keep being such a bitch?” 

Nadia spun round and yanked the lock of hair out of the bird’s grasp one and for all. “Portia!” 

“Sorry,” Portia huffed as they came up against the imposing two-story lodge into which the bun-haired girl had fled. “I just get like this when it’s the end of the world and I’m getting bested by a girl with an army of trained peacocks!” 

At their feet Pepi hissed at one of the aggressors that had tried to take a bite out of her tail. 

“Pea _fowl_ ,” Nadia corrected. “Peacocks are just the males of the species.” 

“Peacocks, peafowls. All I know is you’re being _pe_ dantic!” 

Nadia squinted at the building’s edifice in the last sliver of daylight and did not look back at Portia. “Maybe a little.” 

“Do you see a way out?” Portia asked. They were now almost completely surrounded, and she was menacing the advancing flock with her two-bladed spear. “I really don’t want to have to hurt these birds.” 

“A way out? No.” A smile spilled into her voice as she espied an open, peafowl-sized window that must lead into a second-floor rookery. “But I think I’ve found us a way in.”


	8. The Sanctuary II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nadia and Portia deal with the sanctuary's inhabitant and learn something unexpected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Nadia's route we briefly see a harried peacock wrangler with their hair tied into two buns. It leads to one of Nadia's funniest bits of dialogue which I have written in here. I wanted to see more of this unnamed character, so I've written them in here as Twyla, wrangler of peacocks.

Twyla had known this day would come. The madness, the nightmare: it couldn’t kill everyone. Survivors invaded her sanctum just as she had always known they would, and her brethren were now destroying them. She could not believe her preparations were working. Nothing in her life had ever worked before. She hadn’t even been a very good peacock wrangler. But then the nightmare had begun, and the birds had clung to her, somehow knowing she was the last island of safety in a world no longer natural. 

The taller woman had been familiar somehow. Twyla felt like she should know her, somehow. But it did not matter. She was an invader and invaders must be destroyed. 

Something fell over and clattered upstairs. One of the birds making a ruckus in the rookery, no doubt. Unless… 

Twyla regretted the loss of her spear outside, but she was by no means helpless. Her hand in its fingerless glove snatched the curved knife she kept hidden under a nearby desk and she advanced cautiously up the stairs. Reaching the top and turning toward the rookery, she saw one of the large perches used by the birds had been toppled and standing right there was the red-haired woman looking guilty as sin. Twyla charged; her knife ready to cut the interloper down. 

A blow from behind knocked the wind out of her and sent her pitching forward. She slid into the room on her belly where she found the redhead standing over her with the tip of her curious double-bladed weapon pointed down at her. 

”That was the flat of my blade,” announced the taller woman as she stepped out of the shadows. “We don’t wish to hurt you. But I am afraid that I am going to have to insist – again – that you stop being _rude!”_

“Wait, I know you now…” Twyla said as she looked back at the red-eyed woman towering over her with a drawn sword. “You’re _her.”_

“Yes, I am the Countess Nadia Satrinava, awakened at last from my slumber and trying to retake my city from Death itself. Which is why I would rather not do harm to the living.” 

“You abandoned us!” 

To Twyla’s surprise, the Countess did not deny or grow indignant. If anything, she looked deeply sad at the accusation. “I know. I wasn’t here for you. And maybe if I’d been here I could have stopped this from happening. I don’t know what made me sleep for those three years, or how I could have resisted it. But the fact that I was not here to protect all of you will haunt me for the rest of my life, however short that may be.” 

They kept their weapons leveled at her, but neither woman stopped Twyla from rolling over and sitting up. “Well you’re too late now. I’ve been living in delusion. I let myself believe I was someone important, that I ruled this little place. But my food will run out in a few days. You may as well kill me and spare me having to do it myself. I refuse to starve to death or eat my birds.” 

The redhaired woman lifted her goggles and lowered her breath mask to show her shocked expression. “We’re not going to _kill_ you! We are trying to save everyone we can!” 

“Why bother? I’m nothing. I’m nobody. And nobody will remember me when I’m gone.” 

The Countess’s eyes widened in righteous indignation. “But are you not the peacock wrangler? Wrangler of peacocks?” 

She gestured to the open window of the rookery and the dark exterior where the birds strutted. “Have you not wrangled them?” 

“Yeah!” Portia exclaimed. “What you’ve done here is really impressive; getting all these birds to obey you. Their bites hurt, by the way. But to keep all of them and yourself alive with those things out there? That’s amazing.” 

“They wouldn’t so much as listen to me before the dead started rising,” said Twyla ruefully. “But after… I don’t know, maybe the sensed that we needed each other. They’re the only friends – the only family – I have left now. I’m afraid it’s messed with my mind…” 

*** 

As it turned out, the key to Twyla’s long-term survival had been a small cistern in the basement below the peacock keeper’s house. After calming Twyla down and helping her put her disarrayed hair back into its buns the peacock wrangler had lit some oil lamps against the night. She now sat at a rough wooden table outside the cistern room, her head resting on her crossed arms, seemingly fallen asleep. 

“Are you sure we can trust her?” Portia asked. “She came at us with a spear, then a knife. Not to mention peacocks.” 

Nadia sat at the edge of the large basin full of clear water. She had borrowed a brush from Twyla and was using it to clean the worst of the mess that had accumulated upon her riding jacket during their adventures. 

“She’s harmless. She was just scared, like anyone would be if they found people scaling the wall to their peacock sanctuary. Stress has done a number on her mind, but you saw how quickly she started to grow lucid after talking to her. She just had been alone for too long. You know what that can do.” 

“Not really,” Portia said, still watching the dozing woman. “I had you.” 

She shut the door and turned to Nadia, only to find the Countess with her back to her but completely topless. 

“Milady, what are you doing?” 

The Countess gestured to a smaller basin that she had filled with water along with a sponge and soap their hostess had provided. “Taking a bath, just like I said I was going to do. A Countess is simply not allowed to smell like a walking armpit, even if it is the end of the world.” 

She had already removed her boots and now slid off her trousers, giving Portia an unexpected eyeful of her callipygian buttocks for just a second before the Countess let down her curtain of thick purple hair which hung down to her thighs, concealing the flesh from view. 

All Portia could say was a squeaky “Right now?” 

“Well of course. We’re both women, so what is there to hide? Besides, you’ve been keeping my body clean while I was asleep, so it’s not like you haven’t seen me without clothes before.” 

“Yes but I was _caregiving._ This is different…” 

Nadia turned all the way around and found the tough-as-nails Portia to have an utterly flummoxed expression on her face. “Portia, you’re blushing like you’re about to have a stroke. What on earth is the matter? Truly I did not mean to make you uncomfortable.” 

“No it’s not your fault. It’s just that you up and around naked is different than you in a coma naked I—I’m not explaining this very well. I’ll just step out while you do that. One of us needs to keep an eye on Twyla anyway…” 

Her face now matching her hair in terms of redness, Portia backed out of the room and shut the door behind herself. “What’s gotten into her?” Nadia wondered aloud. She shrugged and set about sponging the layers of dust and sweat that had plastered themselves onto her body. She had only just now awakened into a living nightmare that Portia had already been living for months. Portia might hide the toll of the constant mental strain better than Twyla, but that did not mean she did not suffer from it, and the sudden attack of prudishness was probably a manifestation. 

Unfortunate, because she grew wistful for the marble baths at the palace and thought of how nice it would be to relax in them with Portia. 

For now, though, all Nadia had was a bucket, a bar of soap, and a sponge in the basement of a peacock sanctuary but right then it felt like the best bath in the world. Not knowing when – or if – she would ever bathe again, she savored the sponge bath, right down to scrubbing between every one of her toes. Washing her voluminous purple tresses proved to be a more arduous task, but she did the best she could. 

That was when she heard the growling, and the footsteps so heavy upon the cobblestones beyond the fence that the stones of the basement walls vibrated with them. 

Nadia dressed in haste and raced out of the cistern room barefoot and with her hair still streaming water. Twyla and Portia were not there. She raced up the stairs and searched frantically, eventually finding them crouched by the open window that led out of the rookery, their bodies full of tension. Even Pepi the cat watched out the window with them, bristling and agitated. 

“What’s happening?” she whispered, falling into a crouch just behind Portia’s shoulder. 

The redhead’s tone was fearful. “It’s him.” 

Through the foliage Nadia caught glimpses of the great beast that they had left in the palace moat being chewed on by eels, the yellow beam cast by its single eye cutting the night like a search beacon. 

“How’d he get out of the moat?” Nadia wondered. 

“I don’t know, but I’m not really surprised by it. Are you?” 

Nadia barely had to think about it. “No.” 

It paused at a gap in the trees, its head and shoulders peeking just above the top of the palisade. It scanned the streets as though looking for something and the women could only pray it did not turn their way and look up. The peacocks had fallen deathly silent. In the streets the undead had too. 

“That palisade won’t hold him back any more than the palace gate did,” said Nadia grimly. 

“He never tries to come in here,” said Twyla. “I don’t know what he is, but he’s never acted interested in hurting the animals. In fact, I think maybe the peacocks scare him, funny as that sounds.” 

“There’s nothing funny about that thing,” said Portia, doubtlessly remembering the terrifying battle on the bridge earlier that evening. 

But Nadia couldn’t take her eyes off the thing: the curves in the muscles of its shoulders, the scars marring its flesh. Something was familiar about it, like a memory or a dream. But what were dreams but lies? Valdemar standing before the doors to the ballroom hadn’t been real, nor the dog at the top of the stairs, nor the burning vision of skull-faced Death clacking its great jaws. 

Her head was starting to hurt and she had to shut her eyes, but what she saw behind them didn’t make any sense. This was not like the phantasms she was contemplating. This seemed so real. A wall of water flowing upward around an island. A temple aglow with runes atop a hill… 

Nadia cried out against her will and her eyes opened. She could feel the glowing silver light coming from herself, from the center of her forehead. The other women saw it too and caught Nadia to ease her on the floor as she collapsed. Outside, the monster spun around at the sound and the flash of light. The beam of its lamp-eye shot into the window. 

“Oh no,” muttered Portia as she and Twyla slipped behind the edges of the window. Pepi flattened on her belly upon the floor beside the prone Nadia. “No, no, no, no, no…” 

Twyla thought quickly. Raising a fingerless gloved-hand to her mouth she made a stuttered clucking noise. Across the paddock one of the roosting peacocks let out a mighty shriek. The beast’s head with its baleful beam snapped away to the sound of the noise and it went stomping down the cobbles, running around the fence as it searched for the source of the noise. 

“How did you know it wouldn’t just tear through the fence?” Portia asked. 

“I didn’t,” replied Twyla. “But I think if I hadn’t he definitely would have.” 

They turned their attention to Nadia who lay on her back, catatonic and glassy-eyed with a curious circle emblem glowing upon her forehead. Twyla watched helplessly while Portia shook Nadia, growing increasingly frantic the longer the Countess failed to respond to the calling of her name. 

Then, the Countess gasped, and her body writhed. Portia placed a firm hand on her chest to keep her from sitting bolt upright. 

“Is that thing gone?” she demanded. 

“For now,” said Portia. “But what happened to you? Are you alright? What is that thing on your forehead?” 

As if on cue, the mark faded away. “I’m not sure I know yet myself. But I think I know what that thing is. It’s not undead.” 

Portia and Twyla looked at one another, then back at Nadia as she sat up. Portia asked, “Then what is it?” 

Nadia looked out into the night toward the direction where the monster’s footsteps receded. It seemed to be moving away now. 

“I think it’s one of the Arcana.”


	9. The Teeth That Cut and the Ties That Bind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nadia and Portia leave the peacock sanctuary in search of higher ground.

Surrounded on a cloudy morning by peaceful, leafy trees and beautiful birds that strutted, glided, and roosted without a care in the world, Nadia could almost believe everything was right with the world. But then she would hear the croak of a zombie in the distance or the shuffling of their listless feet nearby and she would be reminded of the terrible reality and her grim duty. 

In the gray daylight she stood in the main room of the peacock keeper’s house, checking their supplies and performing maintenance on the firearms. Twyla the peacock wrangler, now greatly calmed down compared to their first meeting last night, offered Nadia a steaming cup of black coffee and sipped from on herself. A luxury, she had explained, that she was saving for the very end. But now that Nadia and Portia had come, it only seemed right to share it. 

“In the early days I heard people outside talking about making for the coliseum; that there was sanctuary there. If you really are serious about saving people, I’d look there first.” 

“We talked about it,” Nadia replied as she reassembled her shotgun. “It’s a goal. Right now, though, we’re trying to get out of the city and reach the forest. We have a lead on someone who is supposedly out there who might be able to help.” 

Twyla sniffed, then studied the steam rising out of her mug. “Nothing out there but death. And you can’t get there from here. The dead didn’t do all the damage. There was rioting; destruction. Buildings have collapsed. Streets are blocked. I know because I’ve gotten up there and watched from the trees. I had nothing else to do, you know?” 

The breech of the shotgun slammed closed with an authoritative _CLACK!_ “We still have to try.” Nadia stared at the lethal metal in her lap, then looked to Twyla more softly. “Come with us, Twyla. You can’t stay here. You said as much yourself.” 

Twyla shrugged. In her long black coat, she suddenly seemed so small. “I can’t leave the birds.” 

Nadia understood, and knew it would be pointless to argue. At least here Twyla had food, water, and shelter from the hordes. Nadia would only be needlessly leading her into danger. And if she couldn’t guarantee her people’s safety, then what good was she? 

They lapsed into an uneasy silence, and Nadia wished Portia would come back. But her companion was downstairs bathing by the cistern, probably mad at her. Nadia had offered to come help Portia wash her hair which was as thick and almost as long as Nadia’s own, but her companion had refused almost to the point of raising her voice. Nadia couldn’t grasp it. Women with long hair helped each other wash it all the time, but Portia was adamant about neither seeing Nadia naked or being seen naked by her. Nadia had to remind herself that Portia did hail from the distant land of Nevivon. People probably just had different customs with regard to bathing there. 

Eventually Portia trudged up the stairs and the pair made ready to venture out into the hostile streets again, only to be derailed by an argument – out of earshot from Twyla – about Nadia wanting to leave a portion of their food with the stranded peacock keeper. Portia argued that it would only hamper themselves, that they couldn’t do it for every person they met, and that they had already promised to bring supplies back for Twyla anyway. Nadia countered with the argument that Twyla’s circumstances were different than most they were likely to encounter, that they might not even encounter anyone else anyway, and that their promise might not be one that they would be able to keep should they fall to the zombies. In the end Nadia got her way, but Portia stewed and the victory felt hollow. 

It was far too early for cracks to be forming in their relationship. 

But then, after they had said their goodbyes to Twyla and were preparing to climb over the palisade and back into the streets, the short redhead seemed to experience a change of heart. 

“Milady, before we go out, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for calling you a bitch last night. I was just embarrassed. I didn’t really mean it. I’m so, so sorry.” 

Nadia smiled at her, relieved at the easing of the tension. “It’s alright, Portia. I did not expect an apology. I should not have made light of things. It was just a surreal situation, you with a half-dozen peacocks nipping at you.” 

“Pea _fowl,”_ Portia corrected. “Only the males are peacocks.” 

“Hoisting me by my own petard, I see. Now who’s the one being pedantic?” 

Portia blushed and grinned. “I can’t help it. I learned from the best.” 

The women giggled: the first genuine spot of levity they’d been able to enjoy together. It felt good, and Nadia wanted more. But Portia had her questions and Nadia couldn’t fault her at all for that. 

“So you’ve got a magical mark on your forehead that is just going to come and go at the worst possible times,” Portia said, twisting the point of her weapon in the dirt at her feet. “And it let you know somehow that the big guy with the yellow eye is an Arcana? Like… a tarot card?” 

“I’m afraid so. I wish I could tell you more about where I went in my mind last night or what I saw, but I lost it almost as soon as I saw it. All I know is I came back with that certainty. As for the mark on my head, I think it predates all these events, but it binds me to the Arcana, somehow. A particular one, I think, and they are trying to warn me that something is amiss.” 

“Something is definitely amiss, alright,” Portia muttered. “So… you’re telling me those pictures on the cards aren’t just pictures? That they’re real somehow? And one of them got out and turned into a giant zombie?” 

Nadia pursed her lip, reaching for an explanation. “The Arcana are real beings. Not gods, per se, but they do have real power over the areas of concern that they govern. And I don’t know if it’s so simple as one of them ‘got out’ and turned into that. But something has definitely happened to one of them, and whichever one it is, its power is manifested in the beast somehow.” 

Portia’s dainty jaw dropped. “Does that mean killing it is off the table? Killing an Arcana has got to have bad repercussions, right?” 

The mirth of the preceding moment had vanished altogether. “What it means, Portia, is that I don’t think we’ll be able to kill it even if we want to.” 

*** 

The day proceeded, gray and moldy. The streets were silent. As far as the undead went, the women only encountered a handful of isolated stragglers, lethargic and easily cut down. Did the undead need to rest? Did they simply prefer to hide from the sun? That would make sense, as its heat beating down on them would only accelerate the rot of their bodies. 

Did that mean they felt pain? Nadia did not want to think about that. It opened up too many uncomfortable questions about the impunity with which she and Portia hacked them down. 

The skies broke around midday, and the companions were forced to take shelter in the ruins of a scorched and looted shop where they shared a silent meal of stale cakes as they waited for the downpour to end. Only Pepi enjoyed the rest, spending it chasing around a singed roll of packing twine she had found on the floor. 

The second half of the day progressed much as the first had and Nadia found to her dismay that Twyla had been correct. Any avenue that might have taken them swiftly out of the city proper and into the forest seemed blocked or otherwise inaccessible, be it by fallen rubble too treacherous to traverse or by milling herds of the dead too numerous to engage which they were forced to slink away from. 

_So much for the theory that they hide from the sun,_ Nadia groused internally. _It turns out they just like to gather all up in the places where we need to be!_

“We’re running out of daylight,” Portia stated after they were out of earshot from the third such roadblock. “If we hurry we can make it back to Twyla’s before nightfall.” 

But Nadia had formulated a plan: one she cursed herself for not having already thought of. 

“I think I know of a better refuge, and one not far away. In the town square there’s a tower, like a minaret. I couldn’t even tell you what it’s for. Tourist attraction, I think. Another vainglorious monument that my idiot late husband thought would be a good idea to build. But there is a room at the top with an observation deck. You can see the entire city from there. Much better than the tops of Twyla’s trees on the downhill slope her sanctuary rests on. If there is any path back into the forest that we can access, we’ll be able to see it from there. We would be able to see the coliseum too, maybe even see if there signs there of human habitation.” 

“Why didn’t we try that at the palace? We had tall towers there.” 

“This is different,” Nadia insisted. “We wouldn’t have been able to see everything from there that we can see from the square. Not to mention the fact that if our large friend is out there, we’d be able to keep an eye on him.” 

Portia frowned, her big blue eyes focusing deep in thought. She wrinkled her delicate nose. 

“Let me guess,” said Nadia, crestfallen. “You hate it.” 

“Actually I don’t,” the little redhead replied. “Going back to Twyla’s would be safe, but we need to make some progress and you’re right. It would let us hit a lot of our goals at once. It’s worth it to try.” 

*** 

The square looked so different to Portia since the last time she had been there. Without the crowds and the people it looked empty and ominous. No human presence but a few decaying corpses, and whether they were walkers that had been put down, or ordinary humans taken by some other violence or accident she did not know. There in the center was the fountain whose edge she would stand on whenever she had been tasked with making announcements on behalf of the palace. Once this place had resonated with her powerful voice. Now, the cloudy heavens seemed to press down on her, screaming at her to be silent. 

The cat stuck her head up from inside Portia’s cloak. In her peripheral vision Portia saw its ears flatten. 

“I know, Pepi. I know,” she whispered. Although what exactly she knew, she could not say. On the other end of the plaza stood the tower that was their goal. 

“The coast looks clear,” Nadia said into her ear. 

“That’s a lot of open ground to cross. I don’t like it.” 

“Skirting around the plaza through the alleyways isn’t any safer. At least here we’ll see what’s coming.” 

Portia looked up at her taller companion. “And if something comes?” 

“Run.” 

They stepped out into the late afternoon daylight and Portia’s heart began to race. A bead of sweat ran down the side of her face and she rubbed at it angrily. Had she really grown so afraid in just a few short months that setting foot in a familiar place like this could spark agoraphobia? Beside her Nadia walked smoothly and as stolidly as ever. Portia no longer dismissed her as not understanding the dangers. She knew, but she just did what she was necessary. 

Portia locked her eyes ahead and willed herself to keep her chin level and shoulders square. She wanted so very much to be like the Countess. 

But just before they reached the fountain Nadia’s head whipped to the side, red eyes wide as she fixed on the boarded-up doorway of what had once been an exotic rug emporium. Her long fingers were iron claws upon Portia’s forearm. 

“Run!” 

“Nadia, what?” 

“We have to run. It’s a trap. _Run!”_

Portia fought the grip of the suddenly-irrational Countess. “Nadia, we’re fine. There’s nobody.” 

She pointed at the abandoned building. “There! It’s Valdemar! He’s going to let them out! _Run!”_

“Valdemar the creepy doctor from the palace? Nadia, there’s nobody there!” 

Just then, the boards covering the shop’s door and window splintered, torn apart from within… Or did invisible hands yank them off from without? Decaying arms began clawing their way through the breach. 

The women ran about eight steps before they saw a similar commotion at a shop diagonally opposite the rug emporium where clawed hands were ripping their way through the hastily-applied boards. 

“Vulgora too,” lamented Nadia. “This is it!” 

“No it’s not!” Portia cried. Fishing Pepi out of her cloak by the scruff, she passed the little cat to Nadia. “Take her and get to the tower.” 

“Portia, what are you—” 

“Just _go!”_

The doors on both buildings broke open at once, compelling Nadia to sprint against the oncoming hordes. But Portia climbed up on the edge of the fountain where she had so often stood in happier times. 

_“HERE YE, HERE YE, ZOMBIES! DINNER IS PREPARED!”_

The massed undead turned as one toward Portia’s massive, echoing voice then descended upon the fountain. She used her shot gun to blast a path through them, keeping Nadia in sight. But they closed in too fast, diverting Portia until she reached an abandoned draft wagon on the other side of the square. Of Nadia she now saw no sign. Good. She hoped the Countess had made it. Portia leaped for the wagon, planning to use its bed to battle from higher ground. 

She never made it. A wiry undead hand grabbed her ankle mid-air and she slammed down upon the ground. Flipping onto her back, she used the last shell in her blunderbuss to blow the head off the zombie that lunged for her throat. But she couldn’t get back on her feet. Too many, all over her. Six sets of rotting jaws lunged for different parts of her body at once. 

Five heads came off as Nadia chopped through them with inhuman speed. The last one had its grip on Portia’s leg. It’s grip was too tight to shake off and it’s jaws drooled on the soft flesh of her thigh where it sought to take its bite and deliver its curse. 

_”LEAVE HER ALONE!”_

Her sword still half-wedged in a zombie skull, Nadia shoulder checked the monster, driving it off of her friend, buying Portia the moment she needed to leap to her feet. Nadia dashed the thing’s brains out on the pavement, then staggered back, struggling to adjust her riding jacket that had gone off-kilter in the tussle. Portia freed the saber from the other zombie’s skull and passed it to her. Back to back and with melee weapons ready, the duo fell into the familiar rhythm of rising and falling blades, dispatching the dead as they came. 

But there were too many. It seemed impossible that the two buildings could have contained so many. Who had put them in there? How had they gotten there? Portia was aware that she would never know, but the question would not leave her even as the dead’s hungry faces came ever closer. 

The onslaught pushed them against the cart. Once they reached it, Nadia scrambled up into its bed with the grace of a spider. Then she reached down and lifted Portia by her collar as easily as Portia had lifted the cat. The elevated position gave them a significant advantage over the attackers but they were still too many. 

“You were supposed to get to the tower,” Portia said, spearing one damned soul through the eye socket. 

“Not without you,” Nadia countered, cleaving the brain pan of another. 

“But now we’re both trapped.” 

“Not exactly. Hang on. I mean it. _Hang on.”_

Nadia kicked the wagon’s brake and it lurched forward on the slight incline, then accelerate as Nadia lurched her weight forward toward the conveyance’s front. The companions were jostled and bounced as the wagon picked up speed, knocking zombies aside and grinding them under its iron-rimmed wheels until it finally stopped with a teeth-rattling crash against the base of the minaret they had been striving for all along. Vaulting from the wagon’s bed, they dashed inside the tower and barred the door behind them before their mindless pursuers could reach it. Even though the dead could not reach them now, they still sprinted up the stairs two at a time until they reached the top. 

They put the solid door of the top room between them and the dead with the teeth that cut and found themselves in a sort of museum commemorating Vesuvia’s history. Like the rest of the city, it had seen better days. Nadia cleared the guest book and pen away from the desk by the door that led to the observation deck and sat down on its surface, panting heavily for breath while Portia investigated a pallet of blankets and a shabby pillow spread out on the floor. 

“It looks like someone’s been here before us. Think they’re coming back?” 

“I wouldn’t hold my breath. Even if they were planning on coming back tonight, it will be hours before the square thins out.” 

This was good enough for Pepi who burrowed into the blankets, curled up and went to sleep. 

“What were you trying to do?” demanded the sweating Countess. “Sacrifice your life for me? You knew I wouldn’t let you do that!” 

“I wasn’t planning to die. I just miscalculated. It went bad. What happened out there? Were you really seeing people out there before the Dead broke out?” 

“It doesn’t matter.” 

The tone of Nadia’s voice warned Portia not to push further. She gestured to the door beside the Countess. “Well, there’s the balcony. I think it runs around the entire top. Do we want to go out there and look for the things?” 

“In a minute. I just need to catch my breath.” 

But several minutes passed, and as Portia situated their packs on the floor and reloaded the guns Nadia showed no sign of catching her breath. Portia looked up to ask if she were alright and found the Countess’s head lolling, her eyes glazed. Her body slumped and she began to fall off the desk altogether. 

“NADIA!” 

So alarmed was Portia she forgot altogether about using honorifics. Instinct kicked in instantly and she bolted forward, arresting the Countess’s fall. But as she gently lowered Nadia to the floor, the Countess’s jacket fell open. There upon the bare skin of her cleavage were bleeding wounds: the unmistakable mark of a fatal undead bite.


	10. Sundown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the Countess's day ends she and Portia say goodbye.

The sun was setting over Vesuvia, the dead city. Bright red rays of hope streaming through the dissolving clouds that had brought the storm. Portia stood on the balcony of the tower, utterly lost. She couldn’t even remember now what they had come up here to look for. Why look for anything when everything she ever cared about was now lost? 

She closed her eyes against the fresh memory of discovering the bite on Nadia’s breast: of all the hardness and determination she had built into herself over the months of apocalypse breaking down when confronted with a horrible reality that she could not fix, could not change. Yet Nadia herself had been so damn _calm._

_“We have to cut it off!” Portia had babbled. “It’s not too late! We can just cut it off! I’ve got the medical supplies—”_

_Nadia had just smiled at her, gripped Portia firmly but lovingly and caressed her hair. “No you can’t, Portia. Even if you could, it wouldn’t matter. The infection has already spread through my whole body. I can feel it. I know what it means.”_

She sagged against the balcony railing, her head slumping. She just no longer had the strength. And she had been so strong for such a long time. Because she’d had her. Nadia had needed her. She had become this fearsome warrior for her. 

She thought of her brother Ilya, and of Lilinka and Mazelinka who had raised them. She wanted one of them – any of them – to be here now, but especially Ilya. Her reckless, self-destructive irresponsible brother whom you just couldn’t depend on. But when he would put his big arms around her, she would just feel so small and safe with him, like nothing could ever be wrong. If he were here at least her entire world would not be ending. 

Tears streamed down her cheeks. She watched one fall hundreds of feet, vanishing into the plaza below where aimless undead still milled. 

Self-pity turned to burning anger and Portia scrubbed at her cheeks with her sleeves. The dead had taken everything from her. She would _not_ let them have her tears! 

Re-entering the tower museum room and closing the door behind her, she went and knelt down by Nadia’s side. She lay under the blankets on the pallet, shivering with fever. Pepi hunched protectively upon her belly: a cat’s go-to course of treatment when they know that a human they care about doesn’t feel good. 

It almost made Portia break down in tears again. Pepi did not understand. The cat genuinely believed it was all she needed to do to make Nadia better. If only it were true. 

Portia knelt by the side of the dying Countess and slipped her fingers into Nadia’s own. Nadia opened her eyes, and Portia tried to show no reaction to the whites of her eyes having turned bright red. She had seen it before, of course. But seeing it now was different. She forced a smile and asked, “How are you?” 

“Cold." Portia put her other hand to Nadia’s forehead. She was burning up. “It won’t be long now,” said Nadia serenely. 

Her very resignation infuriated Portia. “Why did you do it?” she demanded. “You weren’t supposed to come back for me! I was buying you time! You’re the Countess! You were supposed to live!” 

“I live for my people,” she said. “Then and there, you were all the people I had. So I lived for you.” 

Portia clenched her eyes shut. It was futile not to cry. This was all her fault. If only she had ran when Nadia told her to. If only she hadn’t tried such a stupid stunt to draw the Dead’s attention, forcing Nadia to come back. If only, if only, if only, if only… 

Nadia’s fingers brushed upon her thigh. “You mustn’t blame yourself, Portia. It couldn’t be helped. Like you said, it just went bad.” 

She couldn’t think of anything to say. She just lay down in Nadia’s arms and sobbed. Pepi was momentarily disrupted, but once she understood the gravity of the situation she gently patted Portia’s curling hair and mewed into her ear with a worried _”Peep?”_

“Portia,” Nadia whispered after the servant had cried the worst of it out. “I need to ask for your help one final time. I’m sorry to have to do it. But I don’t want to turn. I don’t want to become one of them.” 

Portia sat up, wiping her wet eyes. “I understand.” From a sheath on her thigh she drew a military dagger she had scavenged long ago and set it on the floor beside them in reassurance. 

“It isn’t fair,” Nadia said, an edge of fear now creeping into her voice. “I wanted to find my people. I wanted to save them. But I saved you, and that’s something.” 

The Countess twisted in agony, causing Pepi to leap away and Portia to draw back in involuntary fear that the change had somehow instantly happened. The spasm passed but left Nadia gasping. 

“I’m sorry, Portia, but it has to be now. I’m not going to last much longer.” 

Portia picked up the dagger, heavy as a meteor. Her hands, so used to killing now wanted nothing to do with it; not with the ending of Nadia’s life. 

With a trembling hand, Nadia guided the point of the blade to the center of the soft flesh where her neck met her jaw. 

“Prakran martial arts training,” she explained. “I know that if you drive the blade in right here it will sever the brain stem right where it meets the brain. Much easier and less messy than trying to go through the skull.” 

Tears fell from Portia’s eyes onto Nadia’s breast, so near the festering bite wound, as if they could cleanse it. Her hand trembled and Nadia gripped harder to steady it. 

“I’m sorry to ask this of you, Portia. I’m so sorry. I just don’t want to turn. I don’t want you to see me like that!” 

“No Nadia, I can’t!” 

“Please, If you love me!” 

Those words. She knew what Nadia meant but it didn’t matter. They were not fair. Portia slumped away. The dagger clanged on the floor. She wept. 

“I’m going to follow you,” she declared. “I don’t want to live anymore. I can’t do this on my own.” 

“Portia,” said Nadia firmly. “I thought this city needed me, but I was wrong. It’s you that it needs. That’s why I had to make sure you lived. That’s why I don’t regret this. You’re like no one else I’ve ever met. You’re a warrior; leader, and a better one than me. Find Asra. Find the survivors. You can. You will. You must. I believe in you.” 

Grimly, Portia resumed her place with the tip of the poniard under Nadia’s jaw. “I will,” she said. “But only because you ask me. Only for you.” 

Nadia smiled and began to say something, but then another spasm hit her; longer and worse this time. “Portia,” she cried on the verge of delirium. “I’m sorry! It has to be now! Before I go, I want you to know, these days with you… Even with all the fear, all the death… They were the best days… That I can remember…” 

Portia steadied herself to drive the blade in. The sun had set on them, the last two survivors of the palace. For all they knew, the last two women in the world. There was a knock at the door. 

“Pasha?” 

Portia jumped like a startled cat at the muffled male voice. It couldn’t be… 

_“Ilya!?”_

The knob of the locked door rattled. _”Pasha!_ It’s me! Let me in!” 

“Ilya!” 

Portia ran to the door and unlocked it, heedless of Nadia’s dazed exclamations of “What? What’s going on?” 

Portia flung open the door and there he was: her long-lost brother, tall as a cliff, clad all in black, his red hair a tussle, his single eye tinkling and his face in a relieved grin. Towering over her, he lunged into the room, picked her up off her feet and spun her around in his arms. 

_“Pasha!_ I can’t believe it! I can’t believe I found you!” He set her down, shutting and locking the door behind him. “I was in the square and I saw you on the balcony. I had to be sure it was you. I’ve been looking for you for months and to finally find you now!” 

“But the square is full of zombies,” said Portia, confused. “How did you get past them?” 

“That’s rather a long story,” said her brother evasively. “I have a great deal to tell you and most of it you probably won’t like—” 

“Julian Devorak…” 

He followed the soft voice past Portia to the woman on the pallet. Edging past his sister, he crossed the room in long-legged strides. “Countess!” he exclaimed, seeing her and the bite upon her chest. “Oh no…” 

With fierce determination he yanked off his black long coat and gloves and looked back at Portia. “How long ago was she bitten?” he demanded. 

“Two hours, maybe?” 

“She’s deteriorating fast!” 

“Get him away from me!” Nadia cried. “He killed Lucio!” 

“No he didn’t! Right, Ilya?” 

He glanced back at her. “That’s complicated. We don’t have time for it now. We’re losing her.” 

“I know, Ilya. Please step away from her. I have to end it before she turns.” 

“No. The Countess can’t just die. I can save her. But I have to do it here. It won't be safe for you but there's no time!” 

To everyone’s surprise, he yanked off his white shirt and knelt over Nadia bare-chested. 

“Ilya, what are you doing? There’s no cure for a bite, you know that! Can’t you see she’s suffering? Please, Ilya, get out of my way! This is hard enough!” 

But her brother spun and pointed at her with a terrifying hardness in his single eye that Portia had never seen before. “Don’t you come _near_ her with that knife!” 

Portia backed away, the blade hanging useless in her fingers. Her brother had clearly gone mad; too dangerous to argue with. Didn’t he see what she had to do? Nadia’s last few moments should not be like this! 

As Portia struggled to figure out what to do and Nadia babbled delirious curses at the man she blamed for the death of her husband, Ilya clasped both his hands over the suppurating tear in the latter’s chest. Then, light began to issue from his throat. A mark glowed there, similar to the one that had appeared on Nadia’s forehead the night before. 

“Ilya… What…?” 

But he did not answer. All of his concentration was for Nadia. He gnashed his teeth in concentration and sweat furled upon his brow. Portia felt her skin prickle like the onset of a fierce summer storm. Then she had to duck and cover her eyes. The artifacts in the room shuddered in the explosion of light that sent Julian staggering backward and collapsing on the floor several meters from where Nadia writhed and gasped. 

Portia stood torn between who to run to first, but then she got a good look at Nadia. The Countess’s chest was completely healed, the bite completely gone. The whites of her eyes had regained their normal color. Nadia, now fully alert and aware sat up on the pallet, pawing at where the lethal injury had been in disbelief. Portia pressed a hand to Nadia’s forehead. 

“Your fever’s gone!” 

“Everything’s gone,” Nadia replied. “It’s like I was never bitten.” 

Looking up at them, Pepi let out a happy _”Peep!”_

Accompanied by Portia, Nadia rose to her feet. “Explain this, Doctor Devorak!” 

But Julian Devorak appeared to be in no condition to explain anything. The women watched in horror as his torso began to bulge and change, the flesh taking on the greenish cast of decaying meat. 

“Ilya!” Portia advanced toward him. Nadia grabbed her shoulder, stopping her just as Julian raised a shaking hand to ward off her advance. He tried to speak but could only growl in pain as his proportions grew at an alarming rate. 

Now Portia stepped back into Nadia’s protective arms. “Ilya?” 

With an agonized grunt, he turned his face to the women. Through gritted teeth he gasped, _“Run!”_

A hellish yellow light blazed out of his single eye.


End file.
